What are YOUR Terms of Service? The Value of Personal Data

The New York Times nails it: “personal data is the oil of the digital age.” It has a price, and it serves as currency. Except that we’re all expected to give it away in return for services like Facebook or Gmail, which we believe is a fair trade. Or we don’t think about it whether the value is commensurate with what we’re getting in return.

I will do so infrequently, but will post them in a way that I retain full ownership (and a modicum of legal control) over them — such as on this blog.

Then I will share that post’s URL on Facebook — as I’ve done here. It doesn’t get a royalty-free license over my photo, it can’t make money off of it, and it will not subject it to facial recognition algorithms. Read the insightful Photo Sharing and Face Tagging — Who Can You Trust? for more on the consequences of social networking terms of service.

My wife took this particular photo with her iPhone; she uses it as her screen saver. This singular image tells the complete story of the joy and tribulations of parenthood.

All of this had inspired me to come up with my own (work-in-progress) Terms of Service for my personal data:

1. The content that I create is mine.

2. You may benefit from my data, but only the data that I expressly share with you as part of an equally weighted value proposition. I get to use your service to fulfill a certain personal or professional objective, you get my data.

3. I will only share things online that I would normally publicly express in a conversation, a lecture, or in writing — unless I truly just want to give away for public benefit (ideally under a Creative Commons license).